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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30051645">Fate's a Bitch</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellegy42/pseuds/Ellegy42'>Ellegy42</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>We All Have a Story to Share [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Catherine and her Fate, Fairytale Fusion, Fate is a bitch, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:55:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,581</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30051645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellegy42/pseuds/Ellegy42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people have kind fates, and some don't. Jason's an Alley rat. His Fate is a cold-hearted bitch, right from the start. Catherine and her Destiny fusion.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>We All Have a Story to Share [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fate's a Bitch</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to Periazhad for the helping hand.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jason doesn’t know how old he was the first time he saw her, but he knows he was young — young and naïve, before his father had been murdered in prison and his mom had wasted away with needles in her arms. But Jason had been born in Crime Alley, he’d seen his father’s fists flying and heard his mother’s tears. He thought he already knew the world’s evils, and it made him arrogant. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh, how wrong he was. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She comes up behind him while he’s scavenging the dumpsters for things he can sell because Dad said Jason has to pull his own weight now. Jason doesn’t really care, but it gives him an excuse to be away from his father’s angry shouts and the stench of sour beer. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You throwin’ that away, lady?” He asks the weird lady in a long, white dress that sticks out in a place like this, nodding to the old-fashioned wheel in her hand — like the ones in the pictures of pirate ships in books at the library. Maybe someone stupid would buy it, if she doesn’t want it. If that doesn’t work out, he can just put it in his room or use it in the stove in the winter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No,” She says simply, and stands there watching him for several moments longer. She pushes a long strand of blond hair from her face with a small smile. “No, I was simply watching you. It is interesting to see people before Fates break their spirits.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Okay, wow. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You high, lady?” Jason squints at her. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her lips pull into a thin smile. “No.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You one of those villains?” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You a pedo?” Jason eyes her a bit more warily. Most people around here know better than to try to grab kids with parents, but this lady’s clearly not from around here, not if she’s running around in a dress like <em> that. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>She smiles a bit wider. It’s not a nice smile. “Such base desires are beneath me. No, Jason Todd, I’m simply contemplating the many ways I will break your spirit.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Fucking <em> try</em>,” Jason snarls furiously. “I ain’t like them. I won’t fuckin’ break, lady. “</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You will,” She assures him. “It is only a question of <em> when</em>.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She laughs, and turns the wheel once, twice, three times in her hands, and then vanishes into thin air like she was never there at all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason squints at the place where she had been and rubs his eyes, but he’s still in the dingy alley, crouching in a dumpster with a pile of scraps beside him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Ah, whatever,” he says eventually, and goes back to picking through garbage. Crazy ladies or not, he still has to find things to sell, or his dad’ll be angry. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Two days later, Jason’s dad gets captured by Batman and stuck in prison, and privately Jason thinks that was mostly a good thing. Sure, his dad won’t be around to help pay rent and get food for him and his mom anymore, but he won’t be around to hit them, either. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe Jason should <em> thank </em> that crazy lady. If this is her idea of ‘breaking his spirit,’ then he can <em> absolutely </em> get behind it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>As it turns out, though, his dad getting arrested <em> was </em> a bad thing, because Mom only barely makes enough money to keep them both fed and warm in the winters, and then she gets sick.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She gets worse and worse, until she has no choice but to go to the doctor, and then the money she gets is going to the bills more than to food or rent or to the heating bill. The blond woman smiles in at him from the windows at night, smirks at him when he visits Mom in the hospital. She’s there when he trips on the steps and when he gets jumped between buildings.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’re a stubborn one, Jason Todd,” She tells him one day while he’s waiting for Mom to get out of her doctor’s appointment. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Fuck you,” he snaps, “I might not know how, but I know this is all your fault.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Of course it is,” She laughs. “I’m your Fate. Don’t worry, Jason. I’ll break you. That’s all you need to know.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lying in bed, late at night while his stomach grumbles at him, Jason scowls at his ceiling. Maybe the crazy lady is going to break him, after all. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He considers that idea for a moment, but — that’s what she wants. She wants to break him and see him crying and broken and shattered like the people who just don’t <em> care </em> anymore, and Jason glowers harder than ever and makes a decision. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He won’t let her break him, no matter what. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s always going to fight, just to spite her. He’s always going to live, and he won’t let <em> anyone </em> take him down, because it’d make her happy. When he dies, he’s going to do it with a smile on his face because he fought, every step of the way, and never broke.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Weeks pass and turn into months, and Mom gets worse and worse. The heat never turns on anymore, but by then it’s spring and they at least won’t freeze to death. She hardly ever has good days anymore, the drugs eating away her mind one needle at a time while the sickness takes the strength from the rest of her. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He sees, once or twice, a pretty woman with blonde hair and a mean smile. He ignores her most of the time, and glares at her the rest.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The job of collecting food falls to Jason’s shoulders, and it’s a job he takes with a glare and a chip on his shoulder. He won’t let the crazy lady’s curse get him or his mom. He’s an Alley Rat, through and through, and that means he can survive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason steals pieces of cars: mirrors and hubcaps, tires and the other pieces he can snatch without getting caught. He pickpockets people. He sneaks into stores and stuffs food into his pockets when nobody’s looking. He scavenges more electronics than ever, taking vacuums and radios and TVs to fix and sell for pennies. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He hears, at some point, that his dad got killed in prison. Willis Todd was a cruel, hateful man. Jason doesn’t much care that he’d died. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Besides — he has bigger things to worry about, like the crazy lady popping up in his apartment again just two days after the news of his dad’s murderer. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s already learned she never comes <em> after </em> things go wrong. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They don’t have much, but they at least have enough to eat, and sometimes Jason is even able to scrabble together enough parts to get Mom a fix so she doesn’t feel so awful all the time. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Spring passes to summer like this, and then fall comes and Jason starts getting worried for real. He doesn’t have enough to pay for heat <em> and </em> food, and the threat of going to sleep one night and not waking up the next morning is a real one. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Winter comes before he figures anything out, because he’s still too small for anyone to take him seriously when he asks for a job and there are only so many idiots leaving their cars alone. It gets colder and colder at night, even when he sleeps curled up next to Mom under every blanket he’s managed to find and wearing three sweaters and two pairs of socks. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>And then one morning he wakes up, but his mom doesn’t. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No,” Jason says, shaking her body desperately, “<em>No</em>, Mom you gotta wake up, Mom, <em> Mom! </em>” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>His mom doesn’t wake up. She doesn’t breathe in and out. She doesn’t do anything, not ever again, because she’s dead. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She’s dead, and it’s all that <em> bitch’s </em> fault. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason doesn’t move from her side for hours, curled into a ball and stifling his tears with his fist. Finally, he pulls himself together and tries to figure out what he has to do next. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He figures it out, somehow, but even years later Jason won’t remember exactly how he dealt with it, how he gets through that day or the next or the one after that, because it’s all he can do to stumble forward and find food and an alley to sleep in, because somehow the cops caught wind of what had happened and foster care isn’t safe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’re still not broken,” The Bitch croons down at him, curled in the corner of a warehouse.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Never.” Jason glares at her. “I will <em> never </em> let you break me. I’ll keep fighting just to <em> spite </em> you, you psychotic bitch. I’ll never give in, just because I know it’ll <em> piss you off</em>.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She tuts softly at him. “That’s not your Fate, Jason. Your Fate is to break into teeny-tiny pieces and <em> beg </em> to die.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>Fuck you,” </em>He hisses, and she disappears again with a laugh.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s easy to lose track of time on the streets, Jason quickly learns. He spends his days scrambling to grab parts before anyone can catch him. He picks pockets. He learns which buildings are good to hide in and which restaurants will give out leftovers at the end of the night. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He learns which areas to avoid, which restaurants are more likely to call the cops than give him a kind word, and how to recognize the ugly gleam in an adult’s eye that means they’re looking for someone to <em> hurt</em>. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He learns how to stay far, far away from those people. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then one day, some idiot makes the mistake of parking the nicest car Jason’s ever seen in a little alley and then leaving the thing <em> unattended </em>. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason could take the mirrors, or just the hubcaps. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He goes for the tires, instead, because he’s been on the streets too long and those are <em> nice </em> , they’d keep him fed for <em> months </em>. He’s gotten a little arrogant, maybe, but that’s because he’s good and because he doesn’t know it’s Batman’s car until there’s a huge, dark figure looming up behind him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s the best mistake he ever could have made, because suddenly Jason is living in a Manor with a billionaire he <em> wasn’t </em> trafficked to, and he can eat as much as he wants, whenever he wants to. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter that Dick’s personality matches his name to a tee, that Alfred is stuffy and insists on calling him <em> master </em> all the time, or that the only chance to spend time with his new guardian is when he’s training or following along on patrol. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Time passes, months growing into years as nothing goes wrong and Jason starts to think that maybe the Bitch finally gave up on ruining his life. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then she smiles from two buildings away as Felipe Gonzonas falls to his death, disappearing just before Batman shows up. He doesn’t even bother trying to tell Batman she’d been there. In all his time as Robin, Jason’s never been able to dig up anything about this woman, or about anything like her. No magicians running around messing with people. No villains calling themselves Fate. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nobody else had ever seen her when he was a kid, even in the middle of a street.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The only thing — the <em> only </em> thing — he finds that even might be related to her is a children’s story about a girl named Catherine. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A couple weeks later, he learns Catherine Todd wasn’t his mom at all, and there was some other woman who’d decided to give him up for some reason, and he <em> has </em>to find out why. He has to find out, before B decides he doesn’t want him anymore or before Crazy Bitch shows back up to ruin his life even more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason gets so wrapped up in thoughts of his birth mom that he misses the blonde woman passing him in the hall on his way out of his old apartment building.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He misses seeing her again on the plane, because he bends down to rifle through his backpack for a book at just the wrong moment. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When a nurse finally points Jason at Sheila Haywood, with her bright blue eyes and her shiny golden curls, his mouth goes dry and he takes a sharp step back before he stops himself, forcing his feet to stay in place. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d say this wasn’t the crazy bitch intent on ruining his life, but — he’s spent three years as Robin now, and <em>there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>On the one hand… well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is the woman who’s shown up before every single tragedy in his life. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is the woman who was there when his dad was arrested, when his mom gave in to the drugs, when he was beaten half to death by gangsters in the dead of winter and only just managed to crawl away after. This is the bitch who smiled at him while Felipe Garzonas took one last step over the edge of a roof. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>But on the other hand — on the other hand, he’s been Robin for three years, and <em> there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are shapeshifters and psychics and magicians, there’s time travel and dimensional travel and an entire multiverse out there, filled to the brim with crazy things that he hasn’t even heard of yet. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It could be some sort of monster that reaches into your mind and takes the image of someone important to you. It could be someone from the future looking to fuck with him. It’s happened to other heroes, even if Jason doesn’t think he’ll ever be nearly important enough for someone to bother coming back in time just to fuck with his head. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason shoves his hands in his pockets and fidgets with the quarter he finds, flipping it again and again in his fingers as he thinks. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>To talk to her, or not to talk to her? </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Should he ask her why she gave him up? Should he talk to this woman, or turn and run the other direction as fast as his legs can carry him? </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He turns the coin in his hands again, and snorts to himself as he pulls it out. There’s an easy way to make this decision, at least for now. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He flips it into the air, sunlight glinting off the silver as it rises and falls again, spinning into a blur as it goes up and then back down. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em> Smack! </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He stares at George Washington for a long moment, resting silently on his palm. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Fate, it seems, wants him to speak with this woman, Sheila Haywood. His mother, who left him to his abusive father in one of the worst cities in the country. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason purses his lips at the coin, and decides <em> No</em>. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>No, he will not be going with Sheila Haywood today. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jason looks back up at Sheila, who’s looking at him curiously, and refuses to look away. “It looks like Fate wants me to go with you,” he murmurs to himself, still watching her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sheila raises her eyebrows and tries to smile kindly at him, but hers isn’t a face made for smiling gently, especially not when Jason knows it so well. That’s a face unused to anything but cold glares and colder smiles, and Jason’s been fighting Fate since he was a child. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>Fuck that noise.</em>” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe she’ll get him eventually, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to make it easy on her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Did I decide the ending of this with a spinny wheel of fate? You bet I did. I <i>also</i> decided whether Fate looks like Sheila with a coin flip. :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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